Best Smartphone Innovation

Best Smartphone Innovation

With largely similar hardware components being used, it takes some effort for smartphones manufacturers to truly different their offerings from the rest besides design. The nominees for this year’s Best Smartphone Innovation award were chosen based on their unique properties and the practicality of their implementation. Case in point: Nokia 808 PureView’s astounding camera technology, ASUS PadFone 2’s refined and sleek tablet dock, and of course, Samsung Galaxy Note II’s enhanced phablet software and hardware additions.

Nominees:

And the Winner Is...

Smartphones have gradually substituted point and shoot cameras since a mobile phone is the one thing that (almost) everyone brings everywhere. Unsurprisingly, manufacturers have jostled hard to be the best in this area, with some providing extra software modes and lenses with bigger apertures. The Nokia 808 PureView represents the next cutting edge in camera technology for smartphones, providing unrivaled imaging quality. For one, the device is backed up by an astounding 41-megapixel camera with a backside illuminated sensor. (As a point of reference, smartphones typically come with 5 to 12-megapixel camera sensors.)

The camera can effectively use a maximum of 38 megapixels when shooting at an aspect ratio of 4:3 (an aspect ratio common in compact digital cameras), and 34 megapixels when shooting at an aspect ratio of 16:9 (the aspect ratio of HD movies). The result is photographs that are nothing short of clarity and details - for a cameraphone, that is.